Why is it that Americans refer to 24 hour time as military time? I understand that the military uses the 24hr format but I don’t understand why the general public would refer to it like that?

It makes it seem like it’s a foreign concept where as in a lot of countries it’s the norm.

  • EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted
    16·
    1 year ago

    Just to be devil’s advocate:

    Time is not really not metric, either, to be absolutely fair. The 60/60/24 thing is mostly just a continuation of the sexagesimal system used by the Babylonians.

    There are also plenty of instances in history where civilizations used a decimal system of timekeeping. Just a summary of the Wikipedia page on the matter below:

    • Egypt: used in astronomy, the decade, equal to 10 days, with 36 decades per solar year, with an added 5 intercalary days at the end.
    • China: the shi and ke, equal to 1/10 of a solar day & 1/100 solar day, respectively, though this has gone in and out of favor with and without modifications due to China having a long-ass (and thus varied) history.
    • Revolutionary France: 10 days per week, 10 hours per day, 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute. (Although, to be fair, most common people ignored it and just used the sexagesimal time base they had always been used to. Lol.)

     

    Alternatively, if you make the decimal second equal to 0.8640… SI seconds, then that would allow you to have 100 seconds per minute, 100 minutes per hour, 10 hours per day, and still have clocks align with the solar day.

    Hell, even our definition of the second is merely the number of “pulses” (word used for brevity’s sake) of the Cesium-133 atom that corresponds to how long our second is. In other words, our definition of the second isn’t based on objective truth; we just found an objective way to define the system we already use. Lol.

    Mind you, I’m merely playing devil’s advocate here. As much as I love the SI, and the metric system in general (both modern and previous versions), and would not be opposed to switching to decimal time if mandated, I’m okay with the system we have now. I JUST FUCKING WISH WE ALL USED 24H FORMAT GODDAMMIT THE AMBIGUITY OF 12H TIME PISSES ME OFF JUST FUCKING WHY GODDAMN IT nearby explosive barrel explodes from proximity to blood vessels

     

    tl’dr: Our conception of time as sexagesimal, and even based on the Cs-133 atom, is not quite as objectively based as one might be led to think. Also, fuck 12h time.

     

    Edit: There are 36 “decades” per solar year, not 3. Lol.

    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I remember hearing an anecdote that (I forget which band) got signed because they misunderstood the record producer when they requested a demo at 8 and showed up ready to play psychedelic rock at 8oclock in the fuckin morning

    • PlexSheep@feddit.de
      2·
      1 year ago

      Good comment. Thanks!

      Isn’t the second defined by light traveling a specific distance in vacuum?

      To add to that, I wish we all just used UTC. Time zones are useless, we could all just adjust to the universal time in local schedules.

      Also: english could be renamed to common and it would make sense.

      • EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted
        2·
        1 year ago

        Isn’t the second defined by light traveling a specific distance in vacuum?

        If we were to redefine the second as 0.864 SI seconds, then the new second would be defined as the time it takes light to travel 0.864x the current meter. Of course since the modern definition of the meter is defined as a light-second, changing the definition of the second would also change the definition of a meter. (One thread loose pulls another thread loose and all that jazz…) My point being that these are merely objective ways to define the units we already use, not objective proofs of said units.

        To add to that, I wish we all just used UTC. Time zones are useless, we could all just adjust to the universal time in local schedules.

        Although that would be absolutely fantastic in my opinion, there are uses to time zones. Most people’s sleep cycles are naturally calibrated to light levels, which vary from time zone to time zone. Originally, time zones were split into equal divisions of latitude across the globe 15° apart, for this exact reason, it being the most logical way to divide them by.

        What I just want is nations to stop fucking this up by using nationality and cultural reasons to have vastly separate areas abide by the same time zones. I mean, for fuck’s sake, here is what they used to look like; here is what they are now. Good gods is that a complete clusterfuck… I mean, seriously, China used to be four time zones; now they’re one!